After Chicago Police bravely stood their ground against a hail of frozen water bottles, high powered fireworks, and other debris thrown at them while defending the statue of Christopher Columbus in Grant Park from being torn down by rioters and vandals.

Because hating the police and undermining them is one of the main objectives of Leftist city leaders, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot had that statue and another statue of Christopher Columbus in Arrigo Park in Little Italy taken down in the dark of night.

This is absolutely disgusting.

The Columbus in Grant Park was commissioned by Italian immigrants in 1933 and displayed for Chicago’s centennial at the Century of Progress World’s Fair.  The statue in Arrigo Park was created in 1892 for the Italian Pavilion at Chicago’s 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition.  It was relocated to Arrigo Park to preserve it in 1966 at the request of the Italian-American Community.

There is a reason that so many Christopher Columbus states were made and installed in America from the 1890s to the 1930s.  That reason, like the statues themselves, are being obliterated by Social Justice.

A major wave of Irish immigrants came to America starting in 1820 and significantly increasing in 1845 through 1860 due to the potato blight.  When the Irish first arrived, they were met with hostility.  “No Irish Need Apply” was real in the mid-1800s.  The Irish had integrated themselves into the United States within a generation.  Things like the legend of the “Fighting 69th” the all Irish brigade of New York, and the bravery they showed fighting for the Union in the Civil War helped.

Starting in 1880 and going through 1924, there was a major wave of Italian immigration to the United States.  The Italians were met with even more hostility than the Irish.  The Irish who had integrated hated the Italian immigrants.  Partly due to the new immigrants undercutting wages.  Partly due to old European rivalries in Catholic politics.  This latter part was compounded by the fact there was also a strong wave of anti-Catholicism in the US at this time and the Italians were overwhelmingly Catholic.

The largest lynching in the US was of Italian immigrants in New Orleans in 1891.  That was only one of many anti-Italian violent attacks in Louisiana history.

A minor story about two Italian immigrant anarchists, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, committing a robbery in 1920 was sensationalized into a moral panic by the media (they have been sacks of shit for a long time, haven’t they) which kicked off more anti-Italian violence across America.

The Italian community in America needed to integrate themselves.  They needed to prove that they were just as much part of the fabric of America as any other group.

One of the ways that they did that was by elevating the story of Christopher Columbus.

It’s true that Columbus didn’t “discover America,” he never made landfall anywhere in the United States.   The Vikings arguably were the first Europeans to make it to the North American continent a century before Columbus, landing in Greenland and Canada.

But that didn’t matter.

“Columbus discovered America.”  That meant that the Italians were not new interlopers, they are have been positively impactful in American history from the very beginning.  Building monuments to Columbus and teaching Columbus in American history helped change America’s attitude about Italians and ended anti-Italiansim.

Fast forward from the early 20th Century to the early 21st Century.

The history of Italian immigrants is no longer taught.  Instead, Social Justice teaches that all European immigrants to America are “White” and have equal privilege as well as guilt and culpability in White Supremcaicm.

Christopher Columbus has been turned into a genocidal slaver, going from lionized to demonized.

This totally erases the ugly history of Italian immigrants in America and the hard-fought way they integrated themselves into this country.

The reason for this is clear.  There can only be one victim.

Remembering a time when Italians were lynched, because as the Governor of Louisiana John M. Parker said the Italians were “just a little worse than the Negro, being if anything filthier in their habits, lawless, and treacherous,” doesn’t help perpetuate the idea of homogenous oppressive whiteness.

The Left is erasing a history of violent, racist, oppression against a group of people who it’s currently not politically advantageous to remember were ever the victims of violent, racist, oppression.

This is beyond horrible and it is a grotesque affront to history that nobody in the media or politics has brought this up.